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Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

religious graduate school

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ8071514
Source-derived summary

The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies is the graduate program of study leading to ordination as a Conservative rabbi at the American Jewish University (formerly known as the "University of Judaism"), offering a Master in Rabbinic Studies (MARS) degree.

History

Founded in 1996, it was the first independent rabbinical school located on the West Coast of the United States. It ordained its first class in 1999.

Located in Los Angeles, it has ordained more than 200 rabbis, about half of them women. The school attracts an international student body, with students from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Israel, Mexico, Uganda, and the United Kingdom, as well as from every region of the United States. Upon ordination, Ziegler rabbis serve in every sector of the United States and Israel. Ziegler rabbis are automatically admitted to the international Rabbinical Assembly.

The Ziegler School ordained only two students in 2021. In 2022, it slashed tuition by 80%, aiming to attract more students and make rabbinical school more accessible. In 2023, after AJU sold off their campus in Bel Air, Los Angeles, the Ziegler School relocated to an office building in Pico-Robertson.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies” is religious graduate school. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ziegler, School and Rabbinic, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1999, 2021, 2022—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1996. For this dossier, Ziegler, School and Rabbinic is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “religious graduate school” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8071514. VIAF identifies the subject as 124873586. Authority coordinates are 34.128, -118.472. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1999, 2021 and 2022.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies primary sources, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies archive and Ziegler research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.